Hales was axed from England's preliminary World Cup squad on failing a second recreational drugs test.
Ben Stokes has supported ECB’s decision to drop Alex Hales from the England squad that participated in the 2019 World Cup, saying it was necessary to avoid any "off-field issue hanging over the team" leading up to the quadrennial event.
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Hales got dropped from the set-up by ECB on failing a second recreational drugs test. He was initially suspended for 21 days by the board before the news was made public, and it was decided he'll be axed from the squad for the whole summer.
"Eoin Morgan made it his business to seek out the senior players within the squad to canvas their views as to what should be done about Alex's situation," Stokes said in his new book 'On Fire.' "When asked directly what I would do, I came straight out with it: ‘No. I can't have him in the squad'."
"The group of senior players within the squad had no idea that he had been suspended because the ECB's rules require it to keep such suspensions confidential. It was soon clear that I was not the only one questioning how we had not known anything about it," said the ace all-rounder.
"It was not that any of us wanted to pry into the troubles of one of our teammates; rather than Alex as an individual had not felt able to share his struggles with a group that he'd spent so much time with, in a team environment over the past few years, that bothered us. We had been a tight-knit team throughout Eoin Morgan's captaincy period and so reading the finer details in a newspaper was not a great way for us all to find out."
Hales was previously given a warning for his involvement in the late-night fight outside a club in Bristol in 2017 that resulted in a substantially long suspension for Stokes.
Citing his own example, Stokes said: "I was speaking as someone with first-hand knowledge of what it's like when an off-field issue is hanging over a team. I went into all the details about my experience of what happened on the 2017-18 tour of Australia and posed the question as to whether Hales was the level of player that we could make an exception for. Was he so indispensable that he was worth keeping in the squad no matter the sideshow that might ensue? No. This was the resounding response from myself and other senior players."
"In the end, it came down to us protecting the culture and environment we had built. A World Cup only comes around every four years and retaining Alex as a squad player would have proved too much of a distraction," he continued.
(With IANS inputs)